Its change over day at Mandiri Beach Club located at Krui in Sumatra. One set of guests leave, with their appetite for waves well and truly fed, as another set of new hungry surfers are due to arrive. They will be chomping at the bit to get involved in some Indo dry season action.
The time in between guests coming and going leaves Mandiri’s resident filmer and photographer Lachlan Mckinnon, aka Misterclips, with a few hours spare to chat.
It’s been a non-stop few months for Lachie since he joined one of the premiere accommodation offerings in Krui earlier this year. Indo has seen one of the best starts to its dry season in recent memory with back-to-back-to-back swells. This has given him the chance to shoot some crazy sessions. It’s an opportunity he is relishing.
“When I first got here we had a consistent two month run of the beachie out front being good and then the dry season swells started to fill in and we had Brenno and the boys from The Mad Hueys come and visit. They actually extended their stay to catch one of the first swells and that was the start of the dream run really. Since then we’ve had all the guys in town for the QS comp score some sick waves and we had that one mental session with Kerrzy and Sierra. It’s been sick to get so many good waves in such a short period.”
The opportunity to work for Mandiri came at the right time for the Gold Coast born filmer. He was previously working on a charter boat in the Ments but recently went through some personal stuff and decided it was time for a change.
Five months into life in Krui and 117 days off the beers (and counting), Lachie seems to have found his happy place in front of the A-frame beachie at Mandiri.
“I loved working on the boat but it can be pretty crazy. After finishing the season I came down here for six weeks, spent time with the guys and loved the operation.
“The people make the place. I’ve got some good friends here now and the locals are super nice. The guys that run Mandiri are good family men and community people. There’s a smaller crew of Westerners doing it here, say in comparison to somewhere like the Ments where the crews there have been running things a bit longer. Krui is growing with a lot of cool people in the area and it seems like a good place to get old.”
When I asked why he stopped drinking, Lachie said there were a number of reasons.
“Since I’ve stopped drinking, I’ve started surfing more. I’ve probably got five to ten more years of swimming in my prime and want to shoot some big waves from the water while I can. When I can’t anymore I’ll sit on the beach with a cocktail and ride a mini-mal.”
One of the sessions Lachie shot from the water recently was a tube fest at a right hand reef in Krui where Sierra Kerr stole the show with ‘one of the best tubes’ Lachie had ever seen.
“That session with Josh and Sierra was definitely a standout amongst the sessions we’ve had so far this season. It was funny because we thought it was going to be packed as there was like 400 people in town for the QS comp and it’s the busiest Krui has ever been. However, there were only eight people out at the start and at one point it was just Sierra and a bodyboarder.
“Josh made like 20 good ones and then Sierra’s was just mind blowing. It was a perfect day of eight to ten foot barrels and just a few people trading off for hours.
“The day after that, Lennox Smith and Dane Henry came up to Jimmy’s and the waves weren’t quite as good but there was still some mental ones. It was the first time I’d seen Dane surf in person for a while, so it was good to see him stack six or seven tubes before the wind came up.”
While those sessions are now in the past, Lachie and the crew at Mandiri are preparing for another set of guests to arrive and with dry season only at the half way mark, the crew will be hoping for many more swells to fill in.
For Lachie, he has no plans of going anywhere soon.
“I love it here. I’ll definitely stay as long as I can. I’ll be here until they get sick of me.”
